Forever Blue (10 page)

"Well that must mean I must have one foot in hell," I said.

"Never. You're an angel sent to rescue me."

I laughed and it struck me as strange how normal it sounded. "Some angel I'd make."

We reached my house and I looked up into those grey eyes that no longer resembled the rain, but instead, the silver lining of a cloud blocking the sun, and whispered into the darkness. "So what happens now?"

Chapter Sixteen

Judah - the previous year

I could only see Cara's shoes from underneath the car, but I could tell from the way they were firmly planted on the ground that she meant business.

"You have to come," she stated plainly.

"I don't," I replied, but my voice got lost in the recesses of the engine.

Cara's feet shifted closer. "It's Guy Fawkes Night."

I wheeled the creeper out from under the Fairlane and peered up at her. She was glaring at me, arms crossed, eyebrows hunched together. From down on the ground she appeared even taller and skinnier than usual. She folded her arms and jutted out her chin, demanding an answer.

"The guy was tortured and hanged, it's hardly something to celebrate."

Cara rolled her eyes dramatically. "Fireworks, Judah. It's about the fireworks. When was anybody actually interested in the history?"

"Did Ruben send you out here?"

She sighed exasperatedly. "Since when did I follow orders from your brother?"

I shrugged and rolled myself back under the Fairlane, replacing the image of Cara with one of sumps and filters. "Since you started spending more time with him." I didn't want bitterness to soak into my tone, but it was there, mocking me as I tried to keep my voice even.

Cara's hand wrapped around my ankle and dragged me back out. "It's been three weeks and you have barely left the house," she said, glaring down at me. "Everyone's worried."

"I'm grounded, remember? Orders from his royal wannabe highness."

Cara placed her hands on her hips. "Your dad's not here."

Resigned to the fact that the conversation was happening whether I liked it or not, I got to my feet and wiped my hands down my jeans. "I'm fine, Cara. I just don't feel like going anywhere."

"So you keep saying."

Frustrated, I ran my hand through my hair which was already thick and matted with grease and sighed. "I just want to get this done." I nodded to the Fairlane.

Cara smiled and batted her eyelashes. "Please?"

"That won't work," I said as I rolled myself back under.

Cara got on the ground, wiggled herself under and lay beside me. "What are you even doing under here?" she said, squinting at underside of the engine. She may have loved cars, but only driving them. She left all the 'greasy stuff,' as she called it, to her father and me.

"Oil change," I replied.

"That's what you do? Every time you're out here tinkering on this, you're changing the oil? Sounds thrilling."

"Oh, it is," I replied dryly. "But sometimes, just for fun, I rub it with little bits of sandpaper. You should be here for that. You won't be able to look away."

"All over?" she teased.

"Every inch."

It felt right, joking with her, back to the way we used to be, the way we would still be, if it wasn't for Ruben. But she didn't say much after that. I tried to ignore her lying next to me, but being wedged under the car meant that there wasn't a lot of room and the proximity of her was intoxicating. I looked sideways. She was staring straight at me with those big eyes of hers, pleading. It was a cruel tactic. She knew I would eventually give in. I never could resist her.

"Come," she said. "You know you want to."

"Fine." I shook my head dismally at my failure.

She smiled and leaned over to place a kiss on my cheek before wiggling her way back out. "Good," she said firmly.

"But I'm not dressing up."

Cara rolled her eyes. "As if I would make you."

"And you realise everyone will be talking about me? This town is so small that this news snippet will last years," I said, following her and sliding out from the car.

"Well, maybe we'll give them something else to talk about." She smiled again, but this time it was coy, and for a moment I was transfixed. My heart raced. But her smile dropped when she saw the way I looked back at her, and her carefree grin returned. "We could make something up. Hey, maybe about Sienna Deacon. That girl needs some gossip spread about her."

Sienna was Ruben's on again off again girlfriend, who I suspected didn't care for him at all but merely liked the attention dating him brought, and it was no secret she and Cara were not fond of each other. They were polar opposites. Sienna was all curves and glitter and gloss. Cara was sharp angles and planes, curse words and smoke.

Cara sunk to the ground, crossing her legs and peering back at me. She had this peculiar way of sitting. She crossed her ankles, and then, somehow, sort of just collapsed to the ground. It was both awkward and adorable. She placed her elbows on her knees and rested her head on the fists of her hands. "What do you think? Drugs?" She laughed. "Nah, it's been overdone. And it's probably true. The best rumours are never true. A drinking problem?" She shook her head and flicked her fingers out to me, indicating she wanted a cigarette. "Everyone in this town has a drinking problem."

"You're horrible," I said, ignoring her outstretched hand and collecting my tools to place them back in my toolbox. My bedroom may have been a mess but I kept the garage spotless.

"Anorexia. Nah, she's not skinny enough. Bulimia?"

"It's hardly something to joke about, Cara."

Cara pouted. "Her dog has bulimia?" She wriggled her fingers and I relented, pulling the cigarette packet out of my pocket and passing her one. I lit hers before I lit my own.

"Does she even own a dog?" I mumbled, because of the cigarette bobbing between my lips.

"I think she has one of those little mop-type things people call dogs." Cara inhaled deeply and leaned back, smiling contentedly.

"You could ask Ruben. I'm sure he knows what she has hidden inside her house." I turned away from her when I said it, but I could still see her out of the corner of my eye and I watched for any sign of tension, of jealousy, for anything that might hint at a relationship with my brother. But Cara just exhaled and then stood, using the same method she did to sit down, by unfolding herself.

"So you'll come?" She cocked her head to the side.

I put the spanner away and turned to face her. She was smiling brightly. She already knew she had won.

"Fine."

Cara skipped over and playfully punched my arm. "Good. One Mitchell boy just isn't enough."

The first time Cara saw Ruben and me at the same time, she never said a word. Often, people commented how much we looked alike, how they couldn't tell us apart, and asked if we ever tried to fool people into confusion of who was who. But Cara never wasted her time with such things, she could always tell us apart, and she was the only person we ever purposely tried to fool. It was just after our thirteenth birthday. I wanted Cara to come to the party, as she would have loved paintball and probably would have destroyed every boy there, but Dad wouldn't hear of it. He said it wasn't right for a thirteen-year-old boy to invite a girl to a paintball party when there were no others going, no matter how much she meant to him, but I know it was simply because Dad didn't think the Armisteads and Mitchells should mingle socially. So I arranged for Ruben and I to meet up with her at the abandoned house later that day, once all the other party guests had left with sore stomachs and eyes glazed with sugar. Birthday parties were the only time Mum ever insisted we dressed the same, so Ruben and I raced across the lawn, dressed identically, hair slicked back just like Ruben liked, and nothing on our feet.

"Do you think she'll be able to tell us apart?" Ruben panted as we ran.

"Of course," I said. There was never any doubt in my mind, no matter how we were styled. Cara was the only person that didn't see me as the lesser part of two. Well, that's what I thought at the time.

"You pretend to be me and I'll pretend to be you, okay?" Ruben said, slowing down and ducking under the collapsed entrance to the house.

"It won't work," I told him.

Ruben walked into the room where Cara was seated on the ground, two crudely wrapped presents outstretched in each hand, our names scrawled in her messy handwriting.

"Happy birthday! They're not much," she said and pushed them towards us.

"Give them to us," Ruben ordered.

Cara narrowed her eyes. She was shorter back then, her growth spurt hadn't hit yet and she peered up through a thick fringe that she was trying to grow out. She leaned forward and held Ruben's out to him. "Here," she said, shoving it in his face.

"Are you sure I'm Ruben?" he asked.

Cara blinked, her eyelashes getting caught in her hair, and smiled. "As sure as I'm Cara." She shoved the present into his hand. "Here, open it." And then she turned to me. "And here's yours, Judah."

I ripped the recycled newspaper off mine and threw it to the ground as Ruben folded his and placed it in his pocket. Inside the box was a leather bracelet with the letters of my name dangling from the thread in cheap plated silver, the type you could buy at a trinket store.

"I made them myself," she said proudly, meaning she threaded each of the letters onto the leather. "This way other people won't get you mucked up either."

"Thanks," I said shyly, wrapping it around my wrist and twisting the ends into a knot.

"But how did you know?" Ruben asked, not interested in the gift. "How did you know that I was Ruben and not Judah?"

Cara smiled and got up to stand between us, wrapping her arms around our necks and tugging us towards her. "Because," she said.

"Because, how?" Ruben asked, twisting away from her.

"Because you're you." She nodded to Ruben. "And you're you." She nodded to me. "You're not the same. God just decided that one Mitchell boy wasn't enough."

Chapter Seventeen

Lennon

"I've been thinking about how I can make it up to you," Ruben said as we walked home from school together. We kept up our tradition every day except for Wednesdays when I had to go and see Grams. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that to everyone else, I strolled along the lake shore alone, but to me he felt more real than anyone else ever had. He saw me and I saw him. I didn't care if no one else could.

"Make what up?" I asked.

"Everything," he said. Neither of us liked to say it out loud, what he was. I think it was because neither of us were completely sure, and saying the word ghost just seemed ridiculous. A ghost was something unseen, something mystical, a suggestion of a person rather than the boy who stood before me. "I want to take you on a date, buy you a gift, do the things that a regular person would do."

"You know I don't expect anything."

"But you should," he said. He stopped walking and looked at me. "I want to be able to do something for you. Are you busy this weekend?"

"What are you planning?"

Ruben's dimples creased. "You'll see."

Saturday arrived and I woke to Ruben tapping against the glass. I dressed hurriedly, mumbled something at my mother, and crawled out the window.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"I'm taking you on a tour," Ruben said as he led me through town. "I've spent a lot of time wandering this town, since, well, since you know, and so I started thinking that it could be the one thing I could do for you, the one thing I could give you." Ruben walked in step with me.  "I'm going to take you to all the places I love in this town that I never really got to experience before, not like I do now. My favourite places."

We walked down the street, careful not to interact as we passed people until we reached the centre of town. Ruben stopped and pointed up. In the middle of Puruwai there was a water tower. It was only kept for its historical and aesthetic appeal and it hadn't been used to store water for a long time. Years ago, people used to climb up the levels of stairs inside and stroll around the narrow walkway at the top to see the surrounding views of the lake, the mountains, and town spread out below.

"Up there?" I asked.

Ruben nodded. "It's amazing."

"What if it collapses?" I said, staring up from the safety of the ground.

Ruben rammed his shoulder against the thick wooden door. "It won't."

I frowned and peered up at the brick walls. "That hardly reassures me."

"Just trust me, okay?" With one last push the door opened just wide enough for us to slip through. Inside was dark and dust danced in the light coming through the crack of the doorway. Iron stairs followed the curve of the building, winding up and up and disappearing into the ceiling.

"It will be worth it," Ruben promised, and he bounded up the stairs, not hesitating when they creaked under his weight. I followed more hesitantly.

The building was cut into five levels, each one two stories. The stairs formed a continual loop around the edge, clinging to the side of the brick with little more than a few bolts and screws. I tried not to think about how rusted and old they looked. Each window framed a different aspect of the town; the roof of The Fat Stag, which had the name of the town painted boldly across it; the scaffolding wrapped around the hotel, ready for the next stage of construction before its opening next season; the sprawled out supermarket, and of course, the lake. Finally, we reached the top and Ruben pushed open the narrow doorway that led outside. The wind was strong and a wave of vertigo washed over me as I looked down. Ruben merely grinned and threaded his legs through the bars of the feeble railing that separated us from the edge. He let them dangle in the air and patted the spot beside him, but I shook my head and pressed myself against the wall.

"I won't let you fall," he said.

I finally steeled myself and sat down, not looking over the edge, but instead, fixing my eyes at the mountains in the distance.

"They look so small," he said, nodding to where a family crossed the road below. He hooked his chin over the top rail and stared down at the ground. "Judah and I used to come up here when we were kids and our parents were busy at the hotel. Dad spent hours talking on the phone and Mum would follow the interior decorator around, barking orders that were never heeded. They never checked up on us. We'd creep inside and play on the stairs having sword fights. Strangely, it never occurred to us to come all the way to the top and look outside. But I've spent a bit of time up here in the last few months. Do you know that over there," he pointed to a small house on the edge of town, "the old lady sunbathes in a bikini? The things you see when no one knows people are watching. She must be near on eighty." He laughed. "Good on her, I say. People need to live the lives they want to live. She also has two dogs that live on nothing but the finest cuts of steak, while she eats the cheap stuff to save money. Rufus and Sewell they're called."

I frowned and peered across at him. "How do you know all this?"

He shrugged. "I get bored."

I looked down at the narrow streets patterned in a grid and the wide sweeping road that followed the lake, and wondered how many times he had walked them in the months since his death. The houses and the stores looked odd from above, as though someone had painted them, and I tried to picture him wandering through their rooms, unlocking their secrets.

Ruben placed his hand in the space between us, palm up, and waited. I slipped mine into his, and his fingers pressed against my skin. With a contented sigh, he leaned back and looked up at the sky. "Do you remember the first word I said to you?"

I thought back to the cemetery, the first time we met, which seemed like only yesterday and yet a lifetime ago. "Blue," I said, wrinkling my forehead in confusion. "Why did you say that?"

He chuckled. "There is a lot of time to think when you're dead, and with no one to talk to, no one to listen, I started thinking about what I would say if I had the chance to be heard again. I imagined what I would say if I just had one word."

"Blue seems like an odd choice," I said.

"Give it time," he urged. "At first, I started thinking about the words I had read that were the most pleasant sounding, not visually pleasing, and nothing to do with their meaning, but just sounded beautiful when you said them. Words like serendipity."

I screwed up my face. "I don't think that one sounds beautiful at all, reminds me too much of stupidity."

"Oblivion?" he suggested.

"Better," I agreed. "Though I still wouldn't consider it beautiful."

"Well, one day, I was sitting up here, staring at the sky which was the most brilliant shade of blue, and then down at the lake, which, of course, is famous for its blueness, and it just hit me."

"Blue?" I repeated, unconvinced by his fascination with the word.

"Say it again, slowly. Blue."

And so I did. "Blue." I noticed the way my lips pursed together, the way my tongue touched the roof of my mouth before flicking down, the way it sounded.

"See?" he said. "It sounds even more beautiful when you say it."

"Blue," I said again, then shook my head. "I'm still not convinced."

"No?" he questioned. "Well it's the most beautiful word I can think of, and believe me, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. It's almost like blowing a kiss." Ruben laughed and shook his head. "I really have spent entirely too much time alone, haven't I?"

I inched closer to the edge and hooked my chin over the railing, my hand still clinging to Ruben's. "I read an article once that 'cellar door' is the most beautiful sounding phrase in the English language."

Ruben hunched his eyebrows, pondering. "I still prefer blue. I had spent so much time thinking about it, wondering what I would say if I was granted just one word for someone to hear, and when you came along, and you looked at me, and you saw me, and you spoke to me, the only thing I could think of was blue."

"Maybe it will grow on me," I said.

I looked over the landscape, my fear of the height slowly dwindling, and followed the curve of Stone's Throw Road. I could just make out the shape of Flynn's car travelling towards his shop.

"So you don't work for Flynn?" I said.

He shook his head. "That is all Judah. I can barely tell one end of a car from the other."

"Did you really think I wouldn't run into him at school?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't know what else to do. I guess I was just hoping you wouldn't find out. Stupid, I know. But it's hardly as though I could tell you the truth."

"Iridescent?" I suggested when the word popped into my head.

But Ruben shook his head and grinned. "Blue."

"So how much of the stuff you've told me is Judah and how much is you?" I asked.

"Not sure, to be honest. It's been hard to keep it all straight in my own head."

"Do you feel any different? Do you feel, well, dead?"

"Not really. Some things are different, like I don't get cold, I don't get hungry, and sometimes, if I try to reach out and touch someone they shudder like they felt me. The first time it happened was with this lady at the supermarket. I was following Mum around, watching what she put in the trolley, which was mainly wine, by the way, cheap wine." He shook his head and laughed. "She would be appalled if anyone knew she drunk cheap wine, and this lady walked straight into me."

"You didn't just pass through her, you know, like they do in movies?"

"It doesn't seem to work that way. A wall's a wall. A person's a person. They walk into me and they don't feel it, but I sure do. And this lady did. She shuddered and looked back at me but she didn't see me, she stared straight through me. But then, I've walked up to other people and literally punched them in the face and they didn't even flutter an eyelid."

"You've punched people?"

"Wouldn't you? If you were wandering around and no one could see you, no one could feel you? Isn't there someone you'd love to punch?"

I laughed. "Can't say I've ever thought about it before."

"Well, I have. I've had a lot of time to think about things like that."

I was still pondering words in the back of my mind. "Luminescence?" I offered.

"Blue," he repeated again.

I sighed. "So why do you think some people have an awareness of you and others don't?"

He shrugged and twisted his head, ignoring the beauty surrounding us and looking only at me. "It seems death holds just as many questions as life." He scooted closer to the edge and swung his legs. "I have thought of something, though, a reason I might still be here."

"What?"

"Judah. Well, Judah and Cara. It's my fault they're not together. I've watched them both for nearly a year and it's my fault they are both so unhappy. Maybe I'm meant to fix that."